Eternity has passed...

hiya...

so...I'm a bit behind now. Like, by quite a lot. The Rome program has finished, and I have much to say, be excited about, review, grump...etc. But no the energy at the moment. Suffice it to say that we went out with QUITE the bang, and as soon as I am allowed to go into details...I will! It's really really cool.

But that ended Friday. Sunday was our last day in our appartment. I woke up super early to help two of my roommates take their suitcases down our four flights of stairs, up a cobblestoned street, and down two more flights of stairs to the metro. I am really good at getting suitcases down stairs now. Oh yeah.
Then I showered, finished cleaning the appartment, foisted some of our leftover stuff, food, clothes, books, on Julia the intern. And booked it out by 11 to catch a train down to Napoli. Or Naples in American. I had a hostel down there for 3 nights, to see Pompei, Herulaneum, and the archaeological meuseum.

Found the hostel...only got a bit lost, and an elderly Italian couple were kind enough to shout down from the second story of their home to me, and pointed me in the right direction. I stayed at the Fabric Hostel. Nice, clean, 9-person dorm room. Actually it was really nice. Decent breakfasts, cheap dinners, nice beds. One of my lockers was broken, but I don't currently have much stuff (left lots of it with Lynda the amazing...another story there), so it all fit in the one that worked.

I rocked the public transport in Naples. Whoa yeah. And kudos to Amanda for the tip about the Art Card. Worked like a dream, definitly saved me money, even with my little...fiasco...that was tuesday.

Anyway. Sunday was a bust for tourism. I was tired and just wanted to chill. But Monday morning saw me and Ivar, a Norwegian kid I met at my hostel...picture: tall, blond, blue-eyed, realllly skinny scandinavian, heading for Pompei.

Pompei...I could rave and rave and rave about it. I was there for basically 7 hours and loved every second. I did regularly have the urge to drop to my knees to brush dust of stuff, and went into RAPTURE over the tile floors...you have NO idea. Gorgeous. The archaeology history bug has bitten me bad. And the level of preservation...oh. wow. So cool. Just walking around the streets, with the narrow roads, ruts of carts still there, tall sidewalks. And being able to just wander into random peoples houses, look in their rooms. AND I got to go into one of the recently rennovated bath complexes. Which was wild. Seeing some of what we've been finding and looking for in my site was quite cool.

End Monday.

Enter Tuesday...a bit of a fiasco, but quite the adventure...

enter also hunger. It is now Wednesday evening for me. I am in Assisi, another adventure getting here, and quite quite hungry. So a brief break while I eat. to be continued. This is mostly to let people know I am alive, and do intend to update you all when I can.

Cheers.